


A Sweet Apple on a Sour Apple Tree

by OwlBird



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 05:01:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/683079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwlBird/pseuds/OwlBird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story between Aragorn and Eowyn, that surely never was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sweet Apple on a Sour Apple Tree

I ain't ahead, nor never will be  
Till the sweet apple grows  
On a sour apple tree  
But still I hope,  
But still I hope the time will come  
When you and I shall be as one

The afternoon hovers in a darkened grey, encouraged by the fact that the time for darkness is not far off, and that the heavy clouds will further confuse the time of day. A not altogether pleasant silence lives in the trees, but neither is it menacing. Now bare branches hug the cottage, damp mixes with earth mixes with smoke and takes root in the man’s lungs. His horse’s bridle does not jingle as it gingerly steps over the debris. Apart from the scratch of hoof on occasional stone the ground embraces the sound of horse and rider, subsuming it back to earth.

They reach the cottage; the man dismounts. He ties horse’s reins to a tree with a guilty conscience. He is unused to doing so. Looks, sees a distance off a brown horse nudging through an opening in the trees, unconcerned. Hers. Pressing down the latch he goes in, ducking his raven-hair to enter. It is a small room: grate straight ahead, a small wooden table to the left and a high bed to the right. Gods knows whoever furnished it but their collections remain, unmolested. Small windows on each side are shuttered barring one that lets in a welcome loamy smell.

It never quite seems right and still his hands reach around her waist to clasp her stomach, his mouth finding the corner of her neck protected by yet sheltered from her hair, which has deepened color and sparks pockets of dark gold. She doesn’t turn around either when he comes in. Who else should it be? And if it is another, then it is all over anyway. She feels it isn’t quite right – it isn’t – yet her stomach trembles laced by his fingers, and she feels herself stretch. 

Their minds are half-blank, uneasy stasis balanced by naggings and desire. Each desiring not to pursue the logical chains of thought – not at all for any thinking would bring them to their unalterable conclusion. No, not even a little bit and they are lucky for as humans this is a possible choice to make. But if their minds squirm and long to wriggle away their bodies don’t. That is the strange, the amazing thing. Their bodies attach together as if a perfect, treacherous, fit, lean into their minds and stoke their fingers’ heat.

How has it happened? To make it be happening as such as now it is while his fingers thickly unlace themselves and her clothes and warm front press against warm back, lean in. Lean forward. Why has this come? As her stays go slack and quickly the fingers long and rough with calluses so long formed would never fully fade, and then enough with that the hands lift the skirts soft and white lift just high enough to reach in and fuck her. Slice upwards between two white legs into the wounded warmth.  
They know, but it is their non-plan of a plan to think about it. Reality clings too closely, too sinuously to their minds’ tendrils for that.

Who knows? Two partners, called to different day-duties, horses saddled then for a ride somewhere and then one walks into the other’s private time, stroking beloved horses until it gleams, and deep drawing as back meets front and horse smells cover and congeal over the desperate smell of human sex. It’s only, they know, that they not think about dare not let even their surface thoughts tread on these eggshells that they are not yet known. And anyway, there’s hardly time for thought when she leans forward with her arms on the fireplace mantel to steady herself, to be strong-backed against his stomach. Moan, moaning comes like honey.

Sweet coats the room and nothing feels as good right now as her wet tightness, nothing feels so good as his sweat leaving its prints, its warm streaks against her. Too quick, always too quick is that hovering before the world shines under that brightest sun, before it explodes, when you can’t help yourself going forward even though you want to prolong by going back. But she knows he knows as they sink weakly to their knees before the fire on the ground they will do this again. Many times, before the daynighttime is over.


End file.
